Norton 360 gets community-minded

Symantec has launched the latest version of its Norton 360 security suite with the expected promises of faster performance and system optimisation tools, but the new feature that stands out most, Norton Safe Web, does so by harnessing the community powers of the internet.

The included Norton Safe Web is a website rating service that's designed to help you asses the safety risk of a site before you visit it, and in particular, judge online shopping sites as reputable or not before you engage in a transaction. It works by crawling the web with an intelligent safety algorithm and combining those results with the feedback from 20 million members of Norton Community Watch. Those burned in an e-commerce transaction can take action by reviewing the dodgy site to warn others or conversely, share info on sites that are good.

Getting into the community thing further, Symantec has also introduced a Norton Users Discussion forum, where you can get advice from staff and other users on all Norton products. There is a dedicated board for Norton 360, which would supplement the product's one-year free web, email, chat and phone support.

To bring this community-mindedness into the charity realm, Symantec locally is also releasing a limited edition "pink" version of Norton 360 version 3.0. The company will donate AU$20 to either the McGrath Foundation in Australia or the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation for each new product purchased and registered online.

Norton 360 Premier Edition, which includes 25GB of secured online storage is available now for AU$149.95.